'Pigeon warfare' attack plot revealed

Britain's Cold War spymasters secretly discussed plans to train flocks of homing pigeons to attack enemy targets with tiny but deadly biological weapons, it has emerged.

The bizarre scheme for feathered suicide bombers to deliver weapons of mass destruction has been revealed in the latest tranche of MI5 files to be released to the National Archives at Kew.

It was the brainchild of RAF pigeon enthusiast, Wing Commander WDL Rayner, who believed that his "revolutionary" theories could change the way future wars were fought.

An ad hoc sub-committee was set up by the Joint

Intelligence Committee, the UK's senior intelligence body, was even set up to look at the prospects for "pigeon warfare".

Rayner even had the tentative backing of Sir Stewart Menzies, the wartime Chief of MI6 for his ideas.

Pigeon committee

However he was defeated by MI5, the internal Security Service, which branded Rayner a menace and ensured that he never had the chance to put his proposals into practice.

The "pigeon committee" was set up at the end of the Second World War, amid concerns that the expertise gained during the conflict in the use of the birds for carrying vital messages could be lost as the Forces disbanded their flocks.

A report by the War Office intelligence section, MI14, warned: "It is clear that pigeon research will not stand still; if we do not experiment, other powers will".

Among MI14's proposals was a plan to train pigeons fitted with explosive charges to fly into enemy searchlights.

Bacteriological warfare agent

Rayner, however, had even more ambitious ideas. His imagination had been fired by the experiments of an American scientist, Professor Yeagley of the Pennsylvania State College.

Yeagley believed that the pigeon's "homing" instinct was linked to the earth's electro-magnetic field and the "coriolis effect" of the planet's rotation.

In one experiment he had found that pigeons released 2,000 miles away from their "home" loft would fly towards a nearby location with the same electro-magnetic and coriolis values as the loft.

Rayner suggested that if pigeon lofts were situated in British territory at locations with the same electro-magnetic and coriolis values as potential enemy installations, in the event of war they could then be turned on the target.

Each bird would carry a two ounce explosive capsule, with a "bacteriological warfare agent".

Rayner did not specify which bacteriological agent he had in mind, although British scientists had already been experimenting with anthrax during the war.

Rayner's plans for full-scale experimental pigeon loft, with some 400 birds, to test his ideas were finally put to rest amid wrangling between the intelligence agencies and forces over who should pay.